I keep talking about all the fun stuff....but what volunteering have I been doing!?!

Hey Everyone,

I think I've been including a few too many pictures of fun week-end trips and not enough updates on the actual projects I'm working on!

First of all...the well project! These are some pictures of the well construction. Yes...that's right, that is the fundi climbing into the well to hand dig it deeper. I tried not to think about the health and safety involved with that one. So this guy, climbs down by the rope to the bottom of the well...

and his friend is at the top, he lifts and empties the dirt from the bucket. Crazy...but that's how it's done here.


Here is Headteacher Lilian monitoring the progress. Rachel and I did most of the material gathering for the well. It was a lot of running around buying cement, sand, wire mesh, rebar, getting the lid welded, people in town were laughing at us. Rachel is the main negotiator, she was really refining her haggling skills, since everyone is always trying to rip us off. Our favourite line was 'If you came to our country, we wouldn't give you a different price because you are African, so why are you trying to give us a Mzungu price?'. The piki piki drivers also thought it was pretty funny that we were carrying around all these construction items, but, it all just gets tied onto the back of a motorbike no problem!


And ta -da! Only two short weeks later, we have a well. I'm really excited for what this means for the school. Now that we have water, next term I am going to be working on the school hygiene program with the kids. Yay for better hand washing and tooth brushing for the kids.

Here is the completely well top, we couldn't resist putting our names into the fresh concrete. We wrote, Stacey, Rachel and the Tumaini Community 2011.


Here is the final picture with the two fundis. This project makes me happy. When I first mentioned the well project, I talked about how we wanted to make it the community's well. We decided to do this by having the school community do some fund raising to help pay for the well repair. We did this by having a big family fun day.... I'm going to put the pictures in a new blog post, because this one is getting pretty long already!